Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (16 page)

Chapter 42

I
drove to Harry’s in the car he had provided me beneath the light of a big moon, the bright night clear and cold.

I sped down Fifteenth, turned on Jenks, and took Sixth over to Beach, my mind racing far faster than I could make the car go.

What was Harry’s connection to the victims? Had they all been his mistresses? Was he the killer? It was hard to imagine him doing what was done to those girls—his age and physical condition alone would seem to make it nearly impossible.

Was it a coincidence that two of the names on the list had a connection to him? It could be just the two, could be that the way they lived made them more vulnerable to coming in contact with men like Harry and the killer.

Harry could be involved and not be the killer, could be connected to him in some way.

Was this what Walt meant about me not having a clue about what was really going on?

And then it hit me. What if the car Walt was driving wasn’t stolen? What if he was still working for Harry? What if he had been all along? Was that why he didn’t leave town? Why he killed the others? But if that were true, he wouldn’t have been helping Howell. And maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just pretending to. Maybe it wasn’t a double but a triple cross. Maybe there was even more to it than that and that’s what he meant. Maybe I was stumbling around blindly in the dark even more than usual.

W
hen I reached Harry’s house on Beach Drive I found it empty and his car gone.

Breaking in, I decided to have a look around. There was nothing suspicious—except it looked as if no one really lived here.

Snatching up the phone, I dialed Delt.

He sounded like I woke him up.

“Jimmy? What is it?”

“I think Harry Lewis may be involved in the killings.”

“What? The mayor? The man who freed you and you’re now working for?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re an entertaining and unpredictable fella. I’ll give you that. What makes you suspect Lewis?”

“At least two of the victims were his mistresses.”

“That’s it?”

“So far.”

“That’s pretty thin. Not saying it’s nothing, but you’re takin’ a helluva risk accusing the mayor of something like that based on a distant connection to two of the girls.”

“I know. I’m still looking into it.”

“Where are you?”

“Harry’s. He’s not here. I’m poking around a bit ’til he gets back.”

“You take chances, don’t you, soldier? Damn man. Be careful. What do you want me to do?”

“Just wanted you to know. Maybe look into it a little on your own when you can.”

“Will do. Now finish up and get out of there before he gets back.”

I looked around some more, spending most of my time lingering with Lauren’s things, which appeared to have been untouched, unmolested, exactly as they would have been when she left.

God, I ached for her, longed to be lingering with her instead of her things, just to be with her the way we once were, lost in each other, hidden from every other soul in the world on our island of intimacy.

In the back of the house, I stumbled upon the live-in housekeeper asleep in a chair in front of a small radio.

“God almighty, boy,” she said. “You scared the life outta me.”

“Sorry.”

She was an older black woman, so thin she appeared emaciated.

“I’m—”

“I know who you are.”

“I’m working for Har—Mr. Lewis. Helping with security. Do you know where he is?”

“No, sir. He gone most nights. Know he got another place somewhere, but don’t know where it is. Stop stayin’ here after Miss Lauren left.”

“No idea where it is?”

“Not the first clue. He usually back first thing in the morning. Make it look like he was here all night. Eats his breakfast and gets ready for work.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Sorry again for scaring you.”

As I turned to leave, the phone rang. I waited as she walked into the hall to answer it.

“If it’s Har—Mr. Lewis, let me talk to him.”

She didn’t respond.

“Lewis residence.” She paused for a moment, looked back at me, and said, “Yes, sir. He still here.”

She then handed me the phone.

“Riley.”

“Jimmy, it’s Delt. We got another body. I think you might know her … Ruth Ann Johnson.”

Chapter 43

A
s I raced down Eleventh toward Adrian’s place, tremors ran the length of my body and I felt feverish.

This was my fault.

I should’ve never involved her, never asked for her help, never let her keep up the charade of my surrogate Lauren. I had unknowingly sent her out into the world to gather information about the victims while looking like one.

Thoughts of my guilt were interrupted by questions about the murderer. Where had they crossed paths? Was it Harry or De Grasse or someone else? Why display her in Adrian’s show again? He took a hell of a risk coming back to it. Why? Why return to a place so recently crawling with cops?

“Y
ou sure you’re up for this?” Delt asked.

He was waiting for me by his car at the curb in front of the dimly lit Victorian.

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes I do. She on the third floor like the other?”

He nodded.

“Where is everybody?”

There were only two cars parked on the curb, and there didn’t seem to be much activity taking place inside the house.

“I had them give us a minute. The rest of them will be here soon. If you want time alone with her …”

T
he third-story room was still a wreck from being a crime scene the first time, the displays disturbed, disjointed, displaced.

There was very little left out in the middle of the floor, most things having been shoved toward the walls, but now in the center of the room a white silk sheet was draped over a body.

“You don’t have to do this,” Delt said.

“This the way you found her?”

He nodded. “I lifted the sheet, looked at her face, returned the sheet, called you.”

“Where is Adrian?”

“Having a drink in the back room downstairs. He’s shaken up but good.”

I approached the body beneath the sheet.

“You sure?” he asked again.

“Yes. Quit asking me.”

Kneeling down beside the body, I carefully took a corner of the sheet in my hand and pulled it back.

The first thing I saw was a shock of blond hair.

But even before I could register what was wrong with that, the blonde Nazi bitch who had tortured and threatened to eat me sprung up and jabbed a syringe into my neck, depressing the plunger immediately as she did, and just as immediately the paralysis set in and I crumpled to the floor.

“Y
ou didn’t give him too much, did you?” Delt was saying.

“Ze drug is experimental. Zis is not exact scientific.”

I was folded into the backseat of Delt’s car. He was driving, and Christa, the tall, thin blonde woman with fine, short hair and jagged bangs who still haunted my dreams, was in the passenger seat.

She turned and looked down at me, her ice-blue soulless eyes beneath her razor-sharp eyebrows ghoulishly gleeful.

“Vell, you are avake. Zis is good. Sometime Nazi doctor drugs too strong for veak, vounded half-man like yourself.”

“I took all you could give me last time, sister.”

She laughed. “I had not even begun before you escaped. Besides, zis time you vill experience ze emotional torture as vell as ze physical. You vill die in more pain zan you zought possible and zen, as I promised, I vill eat you.”

I felt thickheaded and slow, my mouth and throat parched. I couldn’t move anything from the neck down, as if my entire body was asleep.

“What’s your part in all this, Delt? You twisted motherfucker.”

“Language, Mr. Riley,” Christa said. “Language.”

“I know you’re not artistic, so what? You the cutter?”

“I do all ze surgery, zank you,” Christa said.

“De Grasse is the artist,” Delt said. “Or was.”

“I operate,” Christa said. “Flaxon displays.”

“
Was
?” I asked.

“He’s no longer with us.”

“He began to get … a bit demanding. Ve sent him a message,” Christa said. “Razer zan straighten up, he takes ze money and runs.”

“What was the message?”

“You saw it,” Delt said.

“I did?”

“We shoved it right up his ass,” he said.

“Ve put his real art inside his faux art installation—brought ze cops right to his doorstep.”

“Adrian is De Grasse?” I asked.

Delt nodded.

“The place on the water …”

“A decoy. Buy him some time if anyone got too close.”

“Zen he tried to take out ze boss.”

“You were there for that too,” Delt said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“The attack on Harry,” I said.

Delt said, “For a moment there it looked like the boss was gonna miss his chance to make you pay for what you done.”

“Which is what?” I asked. “What have I done?”

“You took another man’s wife, pal. It’s what led to all this. Every bit of this is your fault.”

“So all that stuff about loving her like a daughter was bullshit?”

“Whatta you think? She shouldn’t’ve married him if she didn’t want him to fuck her. She could spend his money but couldn’t suck his dick? Come on, fella, you know that ain’t jake.”

“So you’re doing this to help a man avenge his wife’s infidelity?” I asked.

“Anybody ever put his hands on my wife would lose his hands and a lot more, mister. You can bet the one hand you got left on that.”

“At least be honest,” I said. “You’ve been bought. You were for sale and you got bought.”

“Ungrateful, unfaithful whore,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Just out of curiosity, what was your price?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Ve have all become very, very rich,” Christa said.

“For killing innocent young women?”

“
Innocent
?” Delt said, expelling a sharp burst of humorless laughter. “It was just a few filthy whores.”

And then I saw it. That was it. Harry had to be the one to infect Lauren. He had found young women who looked like her and at least one of them gave it to him—or maybe he already had it and gave it to them. Either way, they had to be silenced. Couldn’t take a chance on them coming out to expose the newly elected mayor.

“Did he rape her?” I asked.

“You can’t rape your wife, pal. What you did, that was rape. Not what a husband does.”

Goddamn but I had been wrong about Harry. Lauren had too—and it had cost her her life.

“He looks so sad,” Christa said. “Ve are feeling pathetic, no?”

“Just realizes he’s not as smart as he thinks he is and he knows this is it,” he said. Then looking in the rearview mirror, said, “And your nigger can’t save you this time.”

I didn’t respond, just wondered again where Clip was.

“You’re always a step behind, Jimmy,” he said. “Wanna hear something funny? When you were talking to Butch, your nigger was in the trunk of his car.”

“Butch in on this too?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t even know. Dumb son of a bitch. I put him in there. It was my car. He’s in there now.”

“Butch?”

“What? No. The nigger. Who the hell knows where Butch is? Who the hell cares?”

“Maybe if you yell loud enough he’ll hear you—if he’s still breathin’. He’s been in there a while though. I would tell you to tap out a message to him if you could move anything but your mouth.”

I could feel a faint sensation in my arm and hand and in my feet, as if they were beginning to wake up, though there were no prickly pins and needles.

“What about Pete?” I said.

“Pete? What about him?”

“What’d you do to him?”

“Don’t know anything about Pete. Sure as shit didn’t do anything to him.”

“Okay, ve are close now,” Christa said, reaching back and covering my face with a chemical-soaked cloth. “Time for you to go night-night, Mr. Riley. I bid you bad nightmares. See you vhen you vake up in hell.”

Chapter 44

W
hen I regained consciousness, I was strapped to a front-row seat in a small but plush theater. The rich lavender curtain was closed so I couldn’t see what was on the stage, but as I craned my neck around, I could see that the walls of the room were decorated with surrealist art and quotes and the back had an installation not unlike the one on the third floor of Adrian Fromerson’s or Flaxon De Grasse’s house.

Compared to the art there, the work hanging here was far more surreal, far more sexual, far more violent.

“Ready for the show?” Harry asked, stepping out of a door at the right side of the stage. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this.”

“For what?”

“The singular pleasure of watching you suffer and die,” he said as he walked over and stood before me.

“Oh that.”

“That’s perfect,” he said. “Attempt to be cavalier. That will make watching you break even better. You are about to experience more emotional, psychological, and physical pain than you ever thought possible, and long before you die you will break and beg like a baby for its mother.”

“This doesn’t strike you as a little extreme?” I said. “All this because your wife who was young enough to be your granddaughter had an affair.”

“Had an affair?
Had an affair
? It was far more than a goddamn affair. She loved you so fuckin’ much she found God. Just an affair. She loved you like she had never loved anyone. Ever. Think about all I had done for her, all I had given her—everything. Everything. All I asked of her was love and respect and affection. And what did I get? I got treated like a leper while you—
you
got everything. I gave everything. You were given everything.”

“She didn’t begin a relationship with me until she knew you were involved with other women.”

“Involved?
Involved
? I wasn’t involved with other women. I was fucking whores who looked like her. Why? Because the whore I had saved and raised and educated and made my wife wouldn’t give me anything in return. I repulsed her. I could see it in her eyes. Me. After all I had done. I contracted syphilis. All because of her. Do you understand? She made me get the damn disease of a fuckin’ whore. Me. The president of Panama City State Bank. The mayor of Panama City. Well, I made good and goddamn well she got it too.”

“And used Walt and the others to make sure she didn’t get treatment.”

“I wasn’t trying to keep her from treatment. I was trying to get her to turn to me. But she never did.”

I didn’t say anything, just thought about how this sick old man had taken everything from me. Everything.

“Enough of that,” he said. “It’s time for the show. Okay, let’s see. The only thing you need to know is that everything you’re about to witness is going to happen to you—as soon as you get feeling back in your body. Can’t have it not hurt, now can we?”

He sat down beside me as the house lights dimmed and the stage lights and curtain came up.

The stage was completely white. Blindingly bright beneath the theater lights.

Ruth Ann’s nude body was mounted upright, spread-eagle to a giant white X with white cables that bit into her flesh. Beside her, in white operating scrubs, gown, gloves, and a cap with a red swastika on it, Christa held a large power saw.

“Let me hear you be cavalier now, tough guy,” Harry said.

“Please,” I said. “I’ll do anything you want. Torture me for years. I won’t even resist. Just let her go. She has nothing to do with this. Please. I’m begging you. What can I do?”

“Nothing. You are powerless. You have nothing to offer. What you are offering—being tortured and killed—is what is going to happen to you. All you can do is watch this happen and then have it happen to yourself. How does that feel? Think about how I felt when no matter what I did, I was powerless to win Lauren’s love. There was nothing I could do to save her from a two-bit dick like you. Powerless.”

On stage, Christa was looking at what was left of Ruth Ann’s missing leg. “Someone beat me to zis one.”

“Jimmy,” Ruth Ann said. “Please. Help me. Jimmy.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “They’ve paralyzed me. I can’t move.”

“Plus he is strapped down,” Harry said. “I assure you, he cannot save you. No one can.”

“Why are you doing this?” she said. “WHY? Please don’t. I’ll do anything. I’ll … please, anything you want. Just don’t do this. Please.”

“I’m sorry, my dear, but your fate is sealed. You can thank Jimmy for that.”

“Oh God. Jimmy. Please. I’m so scared.”

“As she should be,” he said to me. “We’ve given her nothing. She will feel every slice of flesh and muscle, every rip and tear, every nick and break and cut of bone.”

Christa turned on the saw as Ruth Ann began to squirm and scream and I continued to plead with Harry.

The power tool was unbelievably loud in the small theater, sounding as horrific as anything I had ever heard except for Ruth Ann’s screams.

Christa began with the left arm.

Ruth Ann tried to wiggle it away, but it was strapped down too tight.

Lining up the blade at just below the shoulder, Christa prepared to make her first cut.

“PLEASE,” Ruth Ann screamed. “OH GOD. NO. PLEASE. NO. I’LL DO—”

Lowering the saw on the spot she had picked out, Christa’s white outfit was instantly splattered with blood. The blade quickly and easily ripped through the skin, muscles, and tendons, and only took a little longer to grind through the bone.

I have never heard screams like the ones coming out of Ruth Ann’s torture-contorted face—not ever—and when the saw stopped, they only grew worse.

I knew she was in shock, and I knew soon she would stop screaming, but for the moment it was bad. It was as bad as anything could ever be.

“Are you crying?” Harry said.

I hadn’t realized I was.

Even before the horror began I had begun putting distance between myself and what was about to happen, and if I hadn’t, the shock that soon came would have done it for me, but I guess neither were strong enough to stop the involuntary tears at what I was witnessing.

“That’s so sweet.”

With her arm strapped to the upper crossbar of the X, Ruth Ann resembled the other victims, their limbs severed, but only a little space between them.

Images of the friendship we had shared came unbidden. Knocking back bottles of Schlitz at Nick’s. The way she had always worried about me. I thought about every kindness, the way she had cared for me, nursed me back to health, her gentleness and strength and bravery. How many boys were alive today because of her work in the war?

“Never thought you’d feel this way, did you?” Harry asked. “Never thought anything like this was possible.”

“Nothing can compare to losing Lauren,” I said. “Nothing. You should remember that while you’re doing all this. There’s nothing you can do to me that can come close to the pain of losing the great love of my life—the woman who loved me like no other.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that. We’re just getting started. And I’ve had a lot of time to plan this. You’ll see.”

“I love you, Jimmy,” Ruth Ann said in a small, sad, childlike voice. They were the last words she ever spoke.

Soon Christa went back to work, continuing until she and the saw and the stage were covered with Ruth Ann’s blood, until Ruth Ann was too weak to do anything but whimper. She removed her good leg first, then her other arm, then the stump of her missing leg. Ruth Ann was so pathetic, so sad and spent, and the only good thing, the only grace, was that she was in such shock that she was past the point of feeling much of anything and very soon she would be dead.

The brilliant white of the stage beneath the flood of bright light caused the dark red of Ruth Ann’s blood to be all the more astounding, the gruesome scene too much to process, too revolting to be real. And yet it was. It was all too real.